Barbara O’Sullivan

No Beginning No End Of Beginning (detail)
6 panels, each 92 x 61 cm, PVC and Acrylic on canvas

The studio is the place where there are few rules and so my practice is based on the question ‘what will happen if’’? Trying to pin down the opposites of figure and ground is fraught with the frustration of trying to solve a nonsensical problem, however, I have discovered that the language of paint is such a subtle and magical thing that it is able to speak for me. The energy I bring to the painting studio is transmuted into the work itself and becomes the life of the paint. Each time I lay down a colour, spread and mingle different tones, explore the effects of texture and make decisions about presentation, I am becoming the paint itself and it becomes my voice. There develops an awareness that the paint, the painting and the painted merge into one and the sense of separateness dissolves. The clear PVC sheet becomes a membrane, a thinly spread division between the temporal and spiritual, which then dissolves because it too, is empty.

Source: Extracts from Painting the Paradox of Emptiness – Barbara O’Sullivan’s dissertation for her Master of Fine Arts Degree. This document can be downloaded from the artist’s website, and is highly recommended.

No Beginning No End Of Beginning (detail)
6 panels, each 92 x 61 cm, PVC and Acrylic on canvas

The interpretation of emptiness and form into figure and ground provides a tangible means to translate opposites into material form and lead to a new understanding of how the creative act can promote the apprehension of emptiness, that most fulfilling, profound and healing of experiences, the experience of “no separation”.

Dualistic concepts are removed, self and other are reconciled, figure and ground become one, form is no other than emptiness and emptiness is no other than form.

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David Bohm investigates the phenomenon of creativity from all angles. What is a creative mind – and what sabotages its operation? What are the hallmarks of genuine creativity? Can it be cultivated? What is its relationship to health and well-being?

It is [the] flash of realization of not-two-ness, that is both the center and the endpoint of our human experience.
– Frederick Franck

In order to understand the true meaning of Abstract Art, we have to conceive of ourselves as a reflex (reflection) of reality. This means we have to see ourselves as a mirror in which reality reflects itself.
- Piet Mondrian

Seeing is perception with the original, unconditioned eye. It is a state of consciousness in which separation of photographer/subject, audience/image dissolves; in which a reality beyond words and concepts opens up, whose “point” or “meaning” is the direct experience itself.– John Daido Loori